F - A - T-square

Dad didn't do well in school, from second grade through high school he only did well in one class, Drafting. 

Dad told me that he loved that class and was sure he was going to get an A finally after so many years of disappointments and summer school.  He was down to his last project and he was doing it perfectly.  While he was at the drafting table in school working diligently another boy, who never much liked Dad walked by.  Dad's nemesis took this opportunity to jostle his arm.  It was a stupid, yet simple thing to do.

It was Dad's right arm and at the jostling his hand holding the writing instrument drove across the page, marking it indelibly.  I don't know if it was a pencil or a pen but I got the impression that the swath it made across the page would not have been erasable regardless of the instrument.

Dad flew into a rage and with the T-square already in hand he beat the boy with it.  It not only assured him of a failing grade in the class, but I believe a suspension.

It's hard to believe with all the scholastic accolades he earned in the Military and the Police, and how everyone remembers Dad as a great teacher; that he ever had such a hard time in school.  Maybe it was because he had such a hard time that he knew how to help others learn.

Happy Father's Day Dad

1966, First Christmas and first Christmas as a Dad

Happy Father's Day Dad.  I know this story is about me, but in a way it's also a story about you.

When I was still an infant Mom took me to the neighborhood grocery store.  It was on the corner of Kostner and Montrose.

Some woman stopped my Mom while she was walking around with me asleep in the cart .

"Well, I can only assume that you are Mrs. La Fleur, because I've never met you, but that baby sure is Bill La Fleur's.  There is no doubt about that."

Pope's Visit

I just got back from a trip to Boston.  While there I spotted a plaque that said the first mass ever celebrated by a Pope in the New World was on 1 Oct 79 when Pope John Paul II visited.  That reminded me of the La Fleur family's involvement with that trip.

The Holy Father arrived at O'Hare on Thursday night and drove from there downtown to Cardinal Cody's residence.  My grade school band had a space along Milwaukee Avenue.  One of the music teachers owned a store there and staked out the space for us.  When the Pope sped by in his limo we played "Sto Lat."

That reminds me of a joke.  The Pope was riding along in his limo and at one stop he approached the driver.

"It's been years since I've been allowed to drive, but in my youth I used to be quite a good driver.  Would you mind if I drove for a while?"

Of course the diver agreed and he slid into the back while His Eminence got behind the wheel and adjusted the mirrors.

A few miles down the road a police officer stopped the vehicle for speeding.  When he pulled them over and got the driver's identification he was so astonished that he went back to his patrol car and radioed back to headquarters, "You will never guess who I just pulled over driving this limo!"

"Who, is it somebody important, somebody famous, a rock star, movie star, the President?"

"Well, I don't know how is in the back but he must be REALLY important; the Pope is his driver."

Back to Dad's story.

The next morning, 5 October 1979, Dad had been activated by the National Guard for the Papal Mass at Grant Park.  He was in a hospital unit and they wanted them on site to provide medical support if needed.

Dad and some other Guardsmen who were also police officers were sitting around in their tent on Sunday morning discussing what it would have been like for the police if Jesus Christ came back today and gave the Sermon on the Mount.

At some point someone said that the mass was supposed to have started and they wondered if it was running late.  They had had the flaps of the tent down and hadn't seen or heard anyone.

They opened the flaps of the tent and found more than 200,000 people had filed into the park as if it were a church.  They hadn't heard a pin drop.  It was the largest mass ever held in Chicago and the only Papal Mass and Dad was there.

Swimming for Lane

My mom had a box of stuff she found in the house and she had us go through it on Easter. I found a few things that sparked ideas about stories.

I'm going to start with the swim card I found. It reminds me of when Dad was on the swim team in High School.

Dad attended Lane Technical High School and at the time it was an all-boy school. Because the school was all boy the swim team did not have suits, they swam in the nude. I guess the idea was that they would be faster.

One time they were at an away meet and the Lane swim team was gathered in their locker room (clearly not the dressing room) and got a rousing pep talk from the coaches. The captains got them further fired and led them to the locker room door full of, well let's just say pep.

They all lined up; cheering and chanting they made ready to burst into the pool room. The captains opened the door and ran out, followed by everyone else.

The trouble was that this school they were swimming against was large and rich enough to have bleachers looking on the pool. The bleachers were full of parents and siblings, some of them even sisters, and maybe a few grandmothers to boot.

The captains stopped dead in their tracks and tried to back pedal. The rest of the team pressed forward, unaware of the problem, but ready to beat the world.

The result was a dogpile of naked teen boys just inside the locker room door.

They had to quickly find suits or they would forfeit the meet. They did, but the suits were from a grade school or something because they were all too small. They did win the meet I think because they wanted to get out of those small suits as soon as possible.

A Second Aniversary

I hesitate to say "Happy" Aniversary, but I do wish it to all of you reading.

We had a Papa dinner tonight.  I suggested everyone put sugar on their pizza, but we settled for roast beef pizza instead.  We had Pepsi (I couldn't find any RC or moon pies) and after we went on a DQ run.  I had a Heath Blizzard.

Tomorrow for breakfast we are going to dip graham crackers buttered with bacon into our coffee.  Then we'll put corn into our omletes.

I wish I had a cigar.

Papa's Day Off

This weekend I had a dream about Dad, my oldest took the day off today and I'm writing on a lap desk Dad made for us, so I thought I'd share a little thing my Dad used to do.


Every now and then he would call us out of school and take us for a walk in the woods. He called it Family Time, though my Mom never came with us.

I never knew if it was because he had had a particularly harrowing experience, or he just wanted to spend time with his boys.

We would go to La Baugh Woods or the Forest Preserve off Milwaukee and Elston, near Superdawg.

I loved those days. We called them hikes, but they were probably just a short walk in the woods. We were young and he captured the time. Sometimes he could be very wise.

Life moves pretty fast and we stopped to look around once in a while, so we never missed it.

Bad Guys, Frozen Pools and Frozen Lakes

With the snowfall of this week I thought of some of Dad's winter stories.  I've already told the Ernie and '67 Blizzard story.  I've already told the winter camping story.

I have a couple of short little stories I could tell.

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The first one was one dark winter evening when Dad and his partner were following a, "bad guy."  They couldn't see him but it had started snowing lightly and they followed the footsteps in the snow.  Eventually they just stopped.

They looked around and heard a voice in the dark, "Three fifteen."

It was an old man in a doorway along the sidewalk.

Dad said that he thought, "No, it's more like 7:15" before he realized that the old man was talking about an appartment number.

Dad and his partner found and arrested the suspect in appartment 315.

Growing up we had a round, above ground, 25' pool.  One particular winter it had frozen over before Dad had had a chance to do something.  I had no idea why, but Dad decided that he had to break the ice that had formed on the pool.

With my Mom watching from the back door, Dad climbed up on the ice with a sledge hammer and started whacking away.

Suddenly the ice cracked from the center where Dad was standing, straight to both sides, cutting the ice into two huge semicircles.  Dad had one foot on each semicircle and they slide away and up, dumping him directly into the four feet of water below.

Mom saw Dad disappear and the ice slide back to close over him solid.  He was completely gone from sight under what was again a solid sheet of ice.

Suddenly Dad popped up through the ice and worked his way to the edge and climbed out.  Later he explained that he had gone under with the sledge hammer in his hand.  He ducked beneath the water to make sure the ice slamming back together did not slam into his head.

Only a couple of years before Dad retired he was driving around alone in a patrol car, as he was wont to do.  He liked to get out of the office and cruise.

Since he was never in a district along the lake I can only assume that he was not really where he was supposed to be when this story happened.

He was driving along the lakefront when he got too close to the frozen water, and it wasn't quite as frozen as he had thought.  The two passenger side tires broke through the ice.

Since he wasn't where he was supposed to be, doing what he wasn't supposed to do, he was on his own to get out.  Slowly he put the car into reverse and carefully, thankfully backed out.

As soon as he got back off the beach and into his own station I don't think he ever went out alone again.  I KNOW he never went driving on Lake Michigan again.